


Her Umbrella Boy

by narcissablaxk



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Gotham (TV)
Genre: Cuddling, M/M, Nygmobblepot, Reminiscing, nygmobblepotweek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-04-06 14:20:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14058840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narcissablaxk/pseuds/narcissablaxk
Summary: After Arkham, Oswald and Ed find sleep difficult. For Nygmobblepot Week, Day 5: Cuddling





	Her Umbrella Boy

Insomnia was a long-term side effect of Arkham, Oswald supposed, shifting in his office chair as the grandfather clock rang out four in the morning. How long had it been since he slept? One day? Two? He wasn’t sure anymore, but the longer he waited, the more the time seemed to melt together. He would blink and an hour had gone by, but he hadn’t been asleep, because if he had, who filled out all this bloody paperwork? 

Of all the things Arkham left behind – scars, trauma, nightmares, and an addiction to pills, the insomnia bothered him the most. Scars and trauma he had plenty of before, and nightmares couldn’t bother him if he didn’t sleep. But insomnia made him ache, made him irritable, made him weak. 

A quiet knock at his door startled him, and he felt, momentarily, more awake than he had in a long time. “Come in,” he called out, still managing the volume of his voice, should Martin hear. 

The boy deserved his rest, at least. 

Ed poked his head in the door, holding a folder carefully in his hands. Oswald wasn’t terribly surprised to see him there; Ed had always been a night owl. But Ed looked marginally surprised, at least, to see Oswald. 

“I thought you’d be asleep,” he said. “I finished that paperwork on the new warehouse by the docks. Looks like none of Maroni’s old men are going to see enough value in it to fight you for it, so it should be an easy acquisition.” 

“That’s lovely, Ed, thank you,” Oswald groaned, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. 

“It was no problem.” 

He left the file on the desk, but lingered in the doorway. His return to Oswald’s fold had been mostly borne out of necessity, not by any real epiphany on either of their parts, and sometimes, Oswald could still feel the growing pains of their partnership. Before Isabella, Ed would have no trouble asking him whatever was on his mind. 

“Did you want to say something?” he finally asked. Ed looked startled by the question, as if he intended to just stand awkwardly in the doorway until he materialized somewhere else. He stepped more cleanly into the room, wringing his hands. 

“You’re never up this late,” he said simply. 

Oswald waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, Oswald sighed. 

“Is that all?” he asked. 

“It’s just…you’re never up this late, and you look…” he hesitated, dropping his eyes to his hands. “You look exhausted.” 

“I am exhausted,” Oswald agreed, pulling the file Ed had given him closer. “But alas, sleep is a fickle mistress, I suppose.” 

Ed paused at the word choice. 

“It’s a figure of speech,” Oswald replied. 

“I know what it is,” he replied, a trifle belligerently. “It’s just – if you need, I have – I have pills –”

“I don’t want any pills,” Oswald snapped, harsher than he intended. “I have pills. I – I don’t want them anymore.” 

Ed took a hasty step back, almost colliding with the doorframe. “I – okay. Sorry I bothered you.” 

Regret washed over Oswald swiftly, roughly, and he felt like he was choking on it. “Ed, wait.” Ed paused in the doorway again, turning back to Oswald sheepishly. “I was just going to take this to the couch downstairs, to see if that might make me sleepy.” 

Ed fidgeted on his feet. 

“Would you join me?” Oswald pushed on, forcing himself to stand. “You’re not usually up this late either.” 

“I – uh, sure,” Ed shrugged, trying to be nonchalant, but the tension in his neck was a dead giveaway. 

“You don’t have to –”

“I want to.” 

***

Oswald smelled like lilies, Ed noted absently as he settled onto the couch beside him. It was a different smell than he remembered, and his mind remembered everything vividly, painfully, like a flipbook of memories. Oswald used to smell like cologne, something soft and subtle that Ed could never quite place. 

Lilies were ringing a bell somewhere in that flipbook, and Ed lingered on it for only a moment before it came to him: lilies were his mother’s favorite flowers. 

The thought made him unimaginably sad. Had Oswald been visiting her grave alone? Or did he just miss her enough that he kept lilies so close by that their smell had stuck to his clothing? 

“Oswald,” he said softly. “How long has it been since you slept?” 

Oswald was close enough that his shrug brushed against Ed’s arm. “Who knows?” 

“After a certain amount of time, sleep deprivation could cause things like…hallucinations,” he intoned cautiously. “Paranoia, things of that nature.” Oswald turned to look at him curiously. “I would know better than most.” 

He could hear the Riddler pattering around behind him, the sound just echoing enough that he knew no one else could hear it. Oswald furrowed his brows in sympathy and dropped his hand on Ed’s arm. 

“If he is bothering you again, you can take those pills Lee gave you,” he said gently. “They might help you sleep.” 

“Sleep doesn’t make him go away,” Ed replied. “The pills just make me feel…” 

“Weird,” Oswald supplied, and though it wasn’t quite the word he was looking for, Ed nodded. 

“Sometimes, when I really want to sleep, I’ll take the pills that they gave me in Arkham,” Oswald confided quietly. “I don’t know what they are, or what they’re supposed to do, but I sleep. And then I wake up somewhere else, a whole day later. Covered in dirt, or blood.” 

“Sleepwalking,” Ed answered. 

“That’s what I’ve assumed,” Oswald said. “So I stopped taking them, because eventually I have to sleep.” 

“But here we are,” Ed finished. 

“Here we are,” Oswald said quietly, pushing the file he’d brought with him away with his good foot. 

They sat that way for a long time, shoulders touching but nothing else, leaning on each other without acknowledging it. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable, but there was something hanging in the air that was constantly threatening to drop. Finally, when the clock clanged five times, Oswald jumped at the sound. 

Ed hardly noticed, his eyes on the Riddler, who was pacing around the couches, circling Ed and Oswald like a hungry shark. 

“When I was young, my mother and I were very poor,” Oswald’s voice was so quiet, Ed could pretend it was floating down from the rafters. “We lived in this…this garret in the Narrows, a studio that was falling apart at the seams. We used to sleep on the same, ratty mattress. I thought that, when I got older and we moved somewhere better, that I would finally know good sleep.” 

He sighed, his head dropping to Ed’s shoulder. Ed didn’t dare move, lest he prompt him to move. 

“I’m realizing now that nothing will ever be better than those nights in that garret.” He sounded listless, far away from them both. 

“Tell me about it,” Ed said softly. “That little garret.” 

“The building is gone now,” Oswald obliged, settling even deeper into Ed’s side. “Torn down or blown up, I can’t remember. But it looked like it used to be a warehouse, and someone just put thin folds of cardboard to make walls. We were in the corner of the top floor, and in the ceiling sometimes, you could see the sky,” he lifted his hand and pointed to the top corner of the room, his hand falling down almost immediately, exhausted. 

“My mother managed to get this…this camp stove from an empty apartment and we used to it to stay warm in the winter, to cook our food, when we had it. I used to wake up early in the morning and turn it on so my mother could be warm when she got ready for work.” 

“We had this old, pink blanket on that ratty mattress, full of holes and loose threads. But it was my favorite. It’s still in the linen closet somewhere, I don’t have the heart to throw it away.” 

Ed’s eyes swiveled to the Riddler, who had stopped pacing to listen. 

“The only window in the room was right underneath the hole in the roof, so when my mother wanted to watch the rain fall, I would hold her umbrella for her so she wouldn’t get wet.” Oswald chuckled, the sound stunted and small. “Before I ever held Fish’s umbrella, I was my mother’s umbrella boy first.” 

Ed smiled, slipping his arm over Oswald’s shoulder. “You were a good son.” 

“I was never a good son when it mattered,” Oswald replied bitterly. 

“You loved her,” Ed said forcefully, thinking of the revulsion he felt for his own mother. “You were a good son. You still are.” 

Oswald, too tired to argue, nodded, his eyes slipping closed. Ed watched him slide gracefully into sleep. With an affectionate roll of his eyes, he disentangled himself from Oswald and stood, lifting the smaller man easily into his arms. 

Oswald slept soundly through the journey from the couch to his bed, Ed carefully maneuvering so he wouldn’t be jostled. He still had that little furrow in his brow, even when he slept. 

Ed gently placed Oswald on his bed, slipping off his shoes and pulling the blankets over him. He would be disoriented when he woke up, still in his jacket and tie, but Ed couldn’t bring himself to disturb him anymore than he already had. 

“Ed?” his name was a mumble, a whisper, but Ed froze in his exit all the same. “You should stay.” 

Ed smiled and turned back to Oswald, his eyes still closed. “I will,” he promised. “I just have to get something.” 

He scurried out of the room before Oswald could protest again, and tapped his nose, looking for his prize. It took him longer than he wanted, and perhaps it was the anticipation of sleep that made his search messy, but once his hand landed on the ratty pink blanket, he sighed happily. 

He carefully draped the blanket over Oswald, still half-awake. Immediately, he reached for it, coveted it, and pulled it close to his nose to inhale the memories. 

“You found it,” he breathed as Ed slid into the bed, scooting closer to the larger man. He pulled the blanket closer to it covered them both and dropped his head on Ed’s chest, his breathing already deep and even. 

“Good night, Oswald,” Ed whispered, feeling sleep coming for him as well.


End file.
